Hi there, having recently come out of my Dark Ages, I notice that the names used for the Classic Space sets on sites like Brickipedia and Peeron are often different than the names I was familiar with as a kid from the UK catalogues. The most obvious example is the Galaxy Commander (6980), which I knew as the Starship "Explorer" from the Legoland catalogues of the early 80s. I wonder what the reason for this difference is - is it that the UK catalogues were different from those from other parts of the world, that Lego released official names that I was unaware of, or what?

That's just 1983, and I think there are others in the other catalogues too (not all the UK ones are on PICSL though). For example, I seem to recall that I called 6985 Cosmic Fleet Voyager 'Taurean Ore Carrier', which I think was in the 1986 catalogue in the UK (which I may have a copy of in my parents' attic in Ireland if I ever get a chance to retrieve it). Having had a quick look at the US catalogues on Peeron, the current internet names seem to be derived from them. Interesting! But hey, you say tomaytoes, we say tomahtoes...

That's a typical brand that does worldwide producing. It seems to add a bit of a 'rarity' to one or the other. I believe this happened with 1 of the Indiana Jones movies, "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Death" in Europe and "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" in North America.

Yes, that sounds right. I just find it interesting that there's no mention of the alternative names in the various popular internet sites. It's not really surprising though that the North American names have become standard, given the demographics.

Recently I decided to research the various different Classic Space set names in English. Turns out there are different set names for FOUR different countries: USA, Canada, UK, and Australia. Sometimes there's crossover in some of the names, but each of these countries has their own names for at least some of the sets. Bricklink's set names were mostly based of the US sets, probably since the site was US-based. When the set wasn't released in the US, it's anybody's guess what name they went with.

I've pulled most of this info from catalogs for each country, but I'm missing some data from around 1985-87 for the UK and Australia (Australian catalogs have been tough to get, and almost none are scanned online!). I've put together a spreadsheet detailing all of the name differences - here is the gist of it (sorry about the lost formatting):

Impressive amount of typing by SKotK! It's interesting that some names are more logical than others and it's by no means always the same part of the world that had the most logical name for a set.

I can't see myself ever referring to 6985 as anything other than "Taurean Ore Carrier", but where is the ore? And where is the cargo hold to carry it? I always thought of it as a command ship, its rear section detaching to become a static command centre when required. Having said that, its buggy gave elements of exploration to the overall function of the set.

6980, however, was Starship "Explorer" to me. I always thought of it as a ship of exploration, rather than a command craft. The fact that the detachable rear unit resembled a mobile lab, always confirmed my thinking. I'm presuming other people also thought the lab was mobile and could at least skim along a planet surface on its own!

As for 6824 and 6846, the British names are missing from the list given. From memory, which I have not been able to check, I am certain that the British names for these were Zero–10 Interceptor and Zero-15 Interceptor, respectively. I was quite surprised when I discovered that the two did not have linked names in other parts of the world. The vaguely menacing looking red coloured aerial parts pointed forward on these ships always made me think that they had high-powered weapons for their size!

Similarly, I was surprised to learn that the names for 6825, 6872 and 6882 were not linked in other parts of the world, as they were in the UK. The three ships, although quite different, appeared to share a design theme with common elements.